Steve Popper: The pressure is on for Knicks to make the NBA Finals; is this the year?
Knicks head coach Mike Brown speaks to the media at the MSG Training Center on Thursday in Greenburgh. Credit: Howard Simmons
GREENBURGH — The Knicks finished up their final tuneup for the opening round of the playoffs Friday, using nearly a week of time to study tendencies, work out hypothetical situations that will arise and refine every counter to what they will face in the Atlanta Hawks.
But really, as the Knicks head into the start of the playoffs Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, the pressure is more self-induced than anything the Hawks can put in front of them.
The Knicks are the favorite, the third seed in the Eastern Conference; the Hawks jumped into the sixth seed by finishing the season with 19 wins in their last 24 games.
The Knicks have spent the last three days praising Atlanta, pointing out the talented young players and the acumen of coach Quin Snyder.
It’s history, though, that the Knicks are fighting. They haven’t won an NBA title since 1973 and haven’t even been to the NBA Finals since 1999, and nearly the entire roster was in place last season when the playoff run ended in disappointment in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals. Everything that they have built, that they have done, that they have even voiced, is to break this drought.
“It’s great that we put ourselves in this position to be in the playoffs in this position,” Karl-Anthony Towns said. “At the end of the day, the season doesn’t mean anything if we don’t capitalize on this opportunity.
“You can’t look to the future, you can’t look past an opponent. You can’t do any of that. The present is the most important thing. As long as we take care of the present, the future will be taken care of.”
The Knicks changed coaches when the season ended a year ago, upping one level of pressure. Then Madison Square Garden chairman James Dolan went on the radio in January and said, “Getting to the Finals, we absolutely got to do. Winning the Finals — we should win.”
While some of their competitors have seen stars sidelined, the Knicks’ core that has been constructed for this sort of postseason run is completely healthy. All players are practicing and no one is on the injury report. The only hurt is the one that the team has carried from last season.
“I think just everything is a learning experience,” Mikal Bridges said. “Obviously, you’re not happy when you lose, especially when you’re close. But you take everything as a learning experience and build from it and learn from it.”
“We made the playoffs. We had 50 wins, so that was good,” Josh Hart said. “We know we’re going to be judged by what we do starting now.”
It starts at Madison Square Garden, where the sound undoubtedly will be loud — something Atlanta started prepping for by playing audio of Knicks organist Ray Castoldi and crowd noise at their practice sessions.
Atlanta’s Tony Bradley, who was part of the Indiana team that ended the Knicks’ season last year, said he has told his new teammates that the Hawks need to punch first in Game 1.
And after a razor-thin win over Atlanta in the last meeting just two weeks ago, the Knicks are not going to take the Hawks lightly. Jalen Johnson is an All-NBA-level talent, Nickeil Alexander-Walker is a front-runner for the NBA’s Most Improved Player award, CJ McCollum gives them a veteran playmaker and Dyson Daniels is an elite defender who embraces the chance to slow Jalen Brunson.
The Knicks won that game by exploiting the Hawks’ defense with a two-man game with Brunson and Towns down the stretch. Mike Brown said the Knicks already have prepared counters for adjustments they anticipate. But the Knicks are focused just as much on themselves as they are on the intricacies of the Hawks.
“Obviously, you respect what you’ve done all year,” Brown said. “The neat part about it is we’ve faced a lot of different things. We’ve faced cross-matches, we’ve faced teams playing us the same, we’ve faced zone, we’ve faced box-and-1. So to be able to have those different looks throughout the course of the year has helped us work on us.
“You continue to understand what your strengths are and you try to go to your strengths more than anything else while focusing on some of the things they may possibly do.”
If the Knicks wanted bulletin-board material, there’s this: The Hawks could have avoided a meeting with them by playing their starters in the final game, but they sat them and fell from fifth place to sixth place on the final day to set up this matchup. But the Knicks don’t seem to care.
“I think what motivates us is just trying to be the best team we can be, honestly,” Bridges said. “Not really too worried what other teams have to do or what they do, we’re just so worried about ourselves and preparing for whoever we have to play, and it’s them. So we’re just worried about preparing and that’s really it, nothing else.”
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
